10 Thoughts On OU

BOX SCORE

Don’t let the fact that OSU should have put this baby away around the time Brad Wing was on punt #1 in New Orleans sully this edition of Bedlam for you. I’ve seen nearly all of OSU’s 16 games this year and this was probably its best outing. Okay, its best outing if you can somehow forget about those last 8 minutes of, as one of my Twitter followers put it, “prevent offense.” On to the 10 thoughts!

1. LeBryan Nash has to be one of the most emotional athletes in college basketball. The intensity with which he plays defense is entirely predicated upon whether or not he’s doing good things on the offensive end, especially early in the game. Seriously, watch him in the next 5 minutes of Saturday’s game in Waco. If he hits a couple of buckets he’ll be all smiles and defending the crap out of people. If not, he’ll probably get yanked.

2. Speaking of #2, his effort tonight caused me to tweet that he is what Rivals thought he was all along. This game brought out all the best qualities about the young freshman and he really had it going in the second half. 21 points, 8 boards, 3 assists, and a steal and I guarantee you it felt like more than that to everybody on OU’s squad. He was spectacular.

3. Somebody tweeted at halftime (and I’m not sure who because my timeline has been overflowing with Honey Badger and Saban Devil tweets) that everyone on OSU’s squad needs to adopt the intensity and attitude of Brian Williams. He had a great lieele 13-5-1 line but my favorite part of his performance came late in the second half when he sent a forearm shiver at somebody trying to full court press him. As if he was saying “screw you man, this is Bedlam.” Cowboys could use some more of that.

4. Because I can’t go one bullet mentioning one of them without the other, let me say Mike Cobbins is going to be an all-time fan favorite by his senior year. He’s like a poor man’s IMac, but with a higher offensive ceiling. Needless to say, I’m giddy.

5. The dunk LeBryan tried in the second half when he tried to jump a dude from just inside the free throw line would have been the greatest dunk in OSU history had he completed it.. Besides all of Desmond’s dunks of course. 🙂

6. I thought Ryan Stewart (of Go Pokes magazine) made a good point after the game: it was pretty obvious this game was being played between between a non-conference-tested team and one that had cupcakes for six weeks. Oklahoma State looked thin, but rugged and ready to deal with Big 12 play. Maybe they’ll be all right after all.

7. Except that…uh oh…look at what’s looming in the next five games:

at #4 Baylor
at Iowa State
#18 Kansas State at home
#9 Mizzou at home
at Texas A&M

(gulp)…2-3 out of that is a borderline miracle.

8. OSU scored four points from the 8-minute timeout to the 1-minute mark when OU started fouling at the end of the game. That’s on Ford, he clearly told them to close up shop right after he let them take the Tesla out for a test drive for the first 32 minutes. I have no idea why either, I think that’s what you do when you’re worried about your job though.

9. Have to say the ESPNU duo of Dave Fleming and Sean Farnham was terrific. They were knowledgable, dropped tons of OSU and Gallagher-Iba factoids, and accurately called what turned out to be a decent game from two average teams. Good work, fellas.

10. Is anyone else excited about the fact that OSU has basically stopped full on practicing because of how few guys they have healthy right now? I know it sounds like I’m being sarcastic but a modified form of this seems to work quite nicely for Gundy and Co.

Back with the bullets and inside the box score tomorrow morning. Enjoy the soccer title game in NOLA.